Random Thoughts (I'm Not Tired Yet)

I should be asleep at this time, but I am not tired.  Working a full-time job on the summers is murder on your sleep schedule when you are in college, at least 75% of the year is spent in a situation where I would be able to consider midnight an early bedtime and 10am a typical waking time.  The last couple weeks since I've started working I have had to be in at work between 7am and 7:30am, this means waking up around 6:30ish and to get enough sleep to be functional on the next day I'll have to get to bed well before midnight and even 11pm seems like a late bedtime.  That brings us on back to our current time of 10:21pm, and my bedtime rapidly approaching.  The only problem is as you all can see is that it is Sunday night and I still live the college schedule on weekends.  This isn't a new problem as I have already stated it has been several weeks since I have been working this job, but the difference that makes me write about it tonight is the simple fact that Netflix is not working for me at this particular moment so I stumbled back upon this blog and realized it has been a really long time since I have contributed anything to it.

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To continue the monologue until I get tired enough to attempt to sleep I figure it would be nice to think back on my previous job at the local grocery store and see what I was able to take out of that.  I was a bagger or a sacker depending on what you wanted to call me on any given day, and I worked there for a solid 4 years at least, so let us examine how much different every year was for me.  The first year was by far the worst of it, I was a newbie (no0b) and I also couldn't drive so not only did I not work a lot of hours because of that, but I also had to get a ride to and from the store every time I did have to work a menial 3 hour shift.  To make matters more interesting that year was the only one that I worked with my brother, who had already worked there about a year and a half and he basically set my intentions at work as keeping to myself and doing my time.  This was terrible advice as I didn't really make any friends in the store and time goes by a lot slower when you are just alone with your own thoughts.  That first year really was unnecessary and only helped to accentuate what was at that time an awkward stage of my life.

Paper or Plastic  Mother Trucker?

Six months in found me a Senior in high school, and I was able to drive and my brother was gone from the picture.  This is around the time that I met my first good friend from the store, but not through the store itself, but rather from a mix of mutual friends and a shared journalism class in which I feel we became really good friends and still are to this day.  At this point things started to change for the better in my world, as not only did I now have a good friend to kill time with in the store but also through him and my overall change of attitude I became more outgoing and made the right friends to help me get by at work.  I started to have friendships with most of the people I would have to deal with on a regular shift, but I also found myself befriending the Assistant Managers and from that I was given some of the easier jobs and overall just made my life easier (Note: I did not make friends with them to make my life easier, it was just a side effect from them being good people).  Towards the end of my high school career I was good friends with a good portion of the people I worked with and even had a girl really flirting hard with me but I was eventually repelled by a friend of mine telling the story of she and one of his friends having "relations" by simply asking me if I have ever seen The Descent, when I eventually realized what he was getting at things changed and mostly stayed similar for the rest of year 2.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Break to a full year of college under my belt (nothing notable happened in that month I came back during the winter) and I returned as an elder in the store.  As an elder I pretty much had the right to abuse my friendships with the Assistants and I have always thought, girls are attracted to older men, so I felt I was a little bit of a novelty as the college student to the high school juniors and seniors (more on this later?).  So things became slightly different not only because of this but also because things always change over the course of a year, I was broke and needed money so I worked a considerable amount of hours more than I did when I was in high school, and I had friends who I hadn't seen in months so there was a lot of catching up and storytelling to do, and there were also a whole new wave of new employees I had yet to meet.  One of which was more or less my replacement as far as my in-store clique went, and I don't disagree at all, when I finally met him it turned out that we were very much alike, mostly that he was who I wanted to be when I was his age.  We went on to become friends and he was the man I had previously mentioned in a Project Yancey story (for the record I have more or less scrapped the idea of finishing Project Yancey :( ).  It was also a shame that my great friend who helped me open up in the store had since moved into the deli so I rarely saw him while working, but we would have times when we would have our breaks together, most notably the one where we ate an entire package of Hoodsie Ice Creams in 15 minutes.  This summer followed along in a similar vein as what I have already said, and included a night where I couldn't sleep and wrote about the summer in a J.D. Salinger-esque form, but I don't think that will be posted any time soon.  Since I figured I was going to be halfway through college by the time the next summer came along I wished all my friends the best wishes going forward as I would likely not see them much in the future.

I just learned Hoodsies are a regional thing

Fast-forward to the next summer and I was wrong.  After a little original ribbing from a few friends about how I wasn't supposed to be there anymore things went mostly back to normal.  This summer was once again quite different from my other spells at the store, and I worked a lot more morning shifts which is a completely different crowd as it is the adult workers rather than the teenage wasteland the store usually is at nights.  It was also different when I would work the nights because instead of going out of my way to become friendly with almost everyone in the store I tried to ignore the younger kids, although I would still take my time to make friends with all the attractive ladies in the store.  I was coming off a situation with my personal life which didn't pan out for one reason or another, so I was actually quite eager to throw myself back into the mix and that became the most of my interest.  As the older kids ended up banding together into a posse, we had our fun when we could even though I don't believe that I hung out with anybody outside the store save for a "retirement party" at a local Chinese restaurant/bar, when I noticed something that I still need to follow up on (and should soon).  I went all out to make sure that this time it would be my last hurrah, and even went as far as asking if I could get pictures from the security cameras as I walked out on my last day doing my traditional punch-out derobing (unbutton that shirt and put the tie hanging halfway out of your pocket).

Sorry, not clever enough

The next winter I had enough money to take an entire month off and manage to get through my spring semester, and I also grew a beard as another excuse to stay away (rules say no facial hair).  Even though it was not easy and I thought I would have to go back I ended up having my current job fall on me and I am very happy about it.  In retrospect, as much as the work was monotonous and I disliked it, I liked the people I met and I still make appearances to go in and catch up with those who remain at the store (there aren't many).  I also realized one other thing, I spent those last two summers almost exclusively flirting with girls, and unfortunately due to the fact I am in my own way a very shy guy, I didn't jump on opportunities that I am very sure were there and maybe this should be a lesson to me.  I have now killed over 40 minutes reminiscing over 4 years at a grocery store, and I am beginning to get tired enough to try to sleep.  I hope someone learned something of benefits in some way from my stories (maybe one day I will get more in depth with specific stories and moments and make a comedic screenplay or something... Not likely).  Goodnight folks.  

Sums it up!

Project Yancey: Episode 25: Doug Out In Left Field

This is what I'm talking about, the episode kicks us off at a baseball stadium and Patti Mayonnaise being called to the plate.  As she apparently has a batting average of 1.000 (that's perfect for you all scoring at home), she promptly smacks the first pitch for a triple with the worst swing ever (and she also has a foot on the plate so she should technically be out.)  The next batter is Doug, who is announced to be the worst hitter in the league (the only possible parallel is they are the Rays, Patti is Evan Longoria and Doug is Carlos Pena without any power), and he shows why by missing the first two pitches for a quick two strikes.  Doug wonders why Patti only needs help with things he isn't good at when the next pitch blows by him right down the middle, we should assume he was struck out.  So now we return to real life and Doug and Skeeter are at their lockers when Coach Spitz is making an announcement on the intercom that tryouts for the softball team are open to all boys that day after school.  When they get to the tryouts they are promptly turned away along with many others for varying reasons, "negative muscle mass" for Doug and "negative brain mass" for Skeeter. He ends up giving a tryout to some kid in catcher's gear, who turns out to be really good.  When Coach Spitz tells the kid they are on the team and asks for their name, the kid pulls off the mask and reveals the face of Patti Mayonnaise underneath the mask.  Since Patti is a girl he kicks her off the team immediately by telling her to "hit the showers" which he quickly revises to "the girls' showers."  A dejected Patti goes to the bleachers with the rest of the cast-offs and decides the unite them as a team to take on the very team they were trying out for, the Honkers.  When she tells the rest of her band of misfits when practice is gonna be she tells them "I'm counting on you!" and happens to point to Doug who thinks she is solely counting on him.  Their practice the next day doesn't go very smoothly, players are complaining, Doug can't hit, and there was even a stereotypical scene where 3 players converge to catch a ball shallow in the outfield and all give way to the others causing the ball to land safely on the ground.  So after this abysmal showing Doug and Patti talk about it, and they decide they need a way to unite them all as a team.  Right on cue the ice cream man drives by and asks them if they want ice cream, and then continues to ramble about how when you want ice cream you just find someone with a Mr. Swirley uniform (the ice cream man also looks strikingly like Doug with soft serve on his head and if he lived the GTL lifestyle), which makes them think to get uniforms to unite the team.  So Doug is able to scrounge together matching Patti's Pulverizers bumper stickers to put on everyone's backs so they are dressed similarly and feel like a team.  Thanks to the power of being a team, they are able to limit the score so they are only losing 3-1 by the time Skeeter hits a 2-out double in the last inning.  This leaves Doug up with the game on the line, and in his nervousness he forgets to grab a helmet, this is when the magic happens.  Patti tosses Doug a helmet and notices him catch it with his left hand!  She then tells him since he is a lefty he should hit lefty (how did he not think of that), which causes him to hit a double as well.  So now Patti is up with Doug on second and they are losing by one.  She anticlimactically hits a ball hard which is caught on a dive by the other team's center fielder, and they lose.  Because of this showing their team is excited about how close they got, Patti turns down a chance to play for the Honkers because she loves her team and wants to challenge them to play again next week!  The End.

That is definitely GTL Doug working as a ice cream man so he can afford to party.

So this is absolute perfect timing, much like Patti's Pulverizers the 2010 World Series champion San Francisco Giants were also a band of rejects.  Thanks to this perfect timing I am going to write a piece that I decided against when it first happened, so without further ado, I present the 50  reasons its awesome that the Giants won the World Series!
1. Brian Wilson's beard.
2. Sergio Romo's beard. (for a good view of  1 and 2)
3. Edgar Renteria being the MVP despite not starting in the NLCS.
4. Pablo Sandoval being the most popular player on the team despite being benched for most of the playoffs.
5. Buster Posey changing my mind on who the NL Rookie of the Year should be.
6. Aubrey Huff admitting that he wore a "lucky" red thong for all the games from August on.
7. Freddy Sanchez finally getting the chance to show off on the national stage making tons of awesome plays at second base by harnessing the power of a huge mole on his cheek.
8. Juan Uribe having a career year and reminding people that he exists and won a World Series before.
9. Pat Burrell being dropped from the Rays halfway through the year and then winning the World Series.
10. Aaron Rowand being the highest-payed positional player on the Giants and not getting a single start in the playoffs.
11. Andres Torres coming from nowhere and playing great all this year and setting the table many times in the series.
12. Cody Ross for being a 29 year old who is balding and hits homers all playoffs.
13. Cody Ross being the quickest I have come from hating a player (single-handedly beating my Braves) to absolutely loving him (hitting two homers off of Halladay less than a week later)  
14. The fact that Benjie Molina was traded to the Rangers to make room for Buster Posey and ended up playing against his old team in the World Series.
15. Travis Ishikawa's existence (seriously what a sweet name!)
16. Watching the Giant's pitching staff is almost as good as the Shawshank Redemption.
17. Tim Lincecum's hair.
18. Tim Lincecum's pitching.
19. Matt Cain dominating every game he pitched and finally showing everybody that he is a total bulldog.
20. Jonathan Sanchez was expected to be the breakout pitching star of the playoffs but didn't deliver.
21. Madison Bumgarner did deliver.
22. The last 4 players I mentioned will be superstars some day, and were all brought up through the Giant's organization.
23. Barry Zito being the highest-paid player on the Giants and being left off of the roster for the entire playoffs.
24. Barry Zito being reminded how good his curveball used to be whenever he had to watch Cliff Lee pitch against them, who somehow resurrected the famous 2002 Zito curve.
25. Ramon Ramirez being traded from the Red Sox to the Giants after blowing too many games and continuing to blow games.
26. I thought Mark Derosa was going to be huge when he signed with the Giants this offseason, I just remembered now he signed with the Giants this offseason.
27. Bruce Bochy has the world's largest head.
28. The World Series reminded me of 2002 when J.T. Snow saved Dusty Baker's son.
29. They lost the world series in 2002 with Barry Bonds and then won in 2010 without Barry Bonds.
30. This hopefully will mean San Francisco Giants and Barry Bonds won't be synonymous anymore.
31. Willie Mays's catch from the last time the Giants won a World Series (they were the New York Giants).
32. At&T Park is the third most beautiful stadium in sports (under Fenway Park and Wrigley Field).
33. Guys sit in canoes in the San Francisco Bay behind AT&T Park just hoping to get a chance to get a ball.
34. AT&T Park has an area where people are allowed to watch the game for free for three innings behind a chain link fence in the right field wall.
35. This probably caused the first parade in San Francisco in at least a decade that did not involve gay pride.
36. The Giants aren't the Yankees
37. The Giants aren't the Phillies
38. For the second straight year the World Series winner decline their option on the World Series MVP.
39. A Black and Orange team won the World Series the day after Halloween.
40. A team who's fans held up signs that said "fear the beard" won the World Series on the first day of No Shave November.
41. I properly used The Bad News Bears as my movie connection for them.
42. I had them ranked 5th in my playoff rankings (wasn't that bad.)
43. I wrote that I didn't understand how there offense wins games, and I'm still not sure.
44. Nolan Ryan is 63 and still throws 86 mph fastballs in a suit! (Okay sure that's about the Rangers' president but it is still amazing!)
45. Their World Series champion shirts were awesome! (see picture)
46. Nobody expected them to even make the playoffs as recently as late August.
47. They almost had to play a 163rd game to even make the playoffs.
48. They only stood a chance to make the playoffs because the Padres hit a 10 game losing streak and showed me a sports equivalent of the X-men movie trilogy.
49. Brian Wilson is now one of my favorite baseball players despite my massive bias against closers and mohawks.
50. This picture only exists because the Giants won the World Series. (see below)

Brian Wilson, Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain... Magical